The Dirty Pleasures Incident

For those who see the humor in life, and believe in love, sex, and fireflies.

A long journey, but worth the trip. Don't forget to vote! Feedback is always appreciated.

*

It was 12.19 a.m.

He stood on the sidewalk in front of the Easy Cleaners, glancing furtively left and right, making sure he wasn't followed. The moon shone sun bright and full in the sky and he was cast in deep shadow beneath the umbrellas of the tables that lined the walk, waiting for his associate to arrive so that they might proceed to their destination. He pulled the collar of his trench coat up as far as it would go, covering his neck and part of his cheek as he tapped his foot restlessly, wondering if Nate had been apprehended on his way there. He hoped not, because he was pretty sure he would chicken out of this if Nate didn't show.

H heard the scratching of sneakers on pavement right to the left. His head snapped in that direction and his thighs tensed, ready to spring into action if anyone but Nate rounded the corner. He pulled the brim of his hat down over my eyes and waited nervously as the figure approached.

"Andy?" Nate asked in his childish voice.

"Yeah, its me," he replied, releasing a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Thank god you showed. I was beginning to think you'd forgotten."

"With all the damn messages you left on my phone to remind me, I couldn't have forgotten if I'd tried. Why the hell are we out here so late, anyway? And what the fuck are you wearing?"

"I didn't want to be recognized. I'm trying to blend in."

Nate's eyes narrowed.

"You're on Palmdale Boulevard in a trench coat, a wide brimmed hat, and sneakers, for Christ's sake," Nate pointed out. "At midnight. Who the hell are you trying to blend in with?"

"I've never done something like this, dude. Give me a break."

Nate smirked and held back a chuckle. "I guess I've finally found Carmen Sandiego. I've had that game for, like, ten years. You have no idea how long I've been looking for that bitch. They should call me Gumshoe. That black lady who gives out the missions would be so proud."

"Very fucking funny. Are you here to help me with this, or not?"

"Yeah, yeah. I can't believe we're doing this. Are you really too much of a pussy to go during the day?"

"Yes! I'd die of embarrassment. I could never look anyone in the face while I did this shit."

"C'mon, it's not even really that big a deal. I mean, I'm sure guys come here all the time to buy them. You're not alone. We're not that far from Los Angeles."

"Just help me! The sooner this is over with, the better."

"You are so never going to get laid. At least not the way you need to be."

"Nate!"

"Fine, whatever. Let's just go. You're sure they don't have security here, right? If we get arrested for this, they're going to tell your dad what you tried to steal when he comes to bail you out."

"They don't. I've staked this place out for weeks. They don't even lock the door most nights."

"Then let's do the damn thing. Lead the way, Carmen."

"God damn you."

*************************************

Jonathan put his feet up on the "security desk," crossing his ankles as he leaned back in his chair. He hated night duty. It was the most boring thing about working here. Sometimes he really couldn't believe some people. Who vandalizes a Greenpeace office? What was the point? But apparently, there was one, because there had been a string of robberies and property destruction in the past six months. This office couldn't even come close to affording a night guard, so the employees had agreed to take shifts wearing security guard uniforms in hopes that the show of "force" would deter potential assailants. It was working so far.

If I wasn't so dedicated to this, Jonathan thought, I would have bailed hours ago. But he was. He loved the outdoors and everything about nature, and couldn't bear to stand idle in the midst of its destruction. No, as boring as this part of his job might be, he loved every other part of it. The canvassing, the presentations at middle schools, even the ever-present pressure to raise enough money to cover the cost of office supplies for the week were the highlights of his existence.

If only he was as active in social settings lately as he was when he was at work, he might get some action once in a while. He couldn't remember the last time he had had a good lay. Now that he thought about it, it had probably been Becca, and about two months ago. She was pretty good, but he was growing increasingly tired of girls. He had fooled around with a few guys in high school, just experimenting, really, but near the end he had decided he liked girls better and would stick with them. He was reconsidering that choice on an almost daily basis now, and openly ogling attractive guys he passed on the street. Yep, he thought to himself. You may end up with a rainbow sticker on your car yet, Johnny boy. He chuckled at the thought. Another cause to fight for, he thought. At least they don't have offices that need fake night guards to keep idiots from stealing the water coolers at night.

He tensed, on high alert, as he thought he heard some voices coming from downstairs. After a few minutes, they died down, and Jonathan sat back in the seat. It was likely some late night workers at one of the stores downstairs. They stocked shelves at pretty odd hours at some of these places. Oh well, Jonathan thought, yawning. Stock away, boys. Thoughts of hot, young stock workers filled his head as he settled into his seat for a long, long night.

"Like who?" Nate asked sarcastically, "the Fuck Police? Are they out here stalking us, waiting to catch us breaking in to a-"

"Shhhhhhhh!"

Nate just scowled.

"Okay, here we are," Andy said as they approached the shop. "Okay. Cool. Okay. We can do this."

Nate rolled his eyes and reached for the door handle. He pulled on it gently, and when no alarms went off, he opened it fully. He went in first.

"Well?" He asked Andy impatiently. "Are you coming in or not? I have an 8 a.m. lab tomorrow. You better hurry the fuck up before I ditch you here."

"I'm coming, I'm right here, God!"

They walk into the darkness, Andy on tiptoe, and made their way past the nude calendars and nipple clips to the back of the store, where the dildos and porn movies were. When they were safely in the back room, Andy let out a breath.

"Okay, we're in. I wish we had more light, though," he said quietly, looking at shelves in front of him illuminated in the dim glow of his Wal-Mart flashlight. "I can't see which ones are which very well."

He walked up to the shelves beside Andy and began to rifle through the packages. "Ooh, look, this one has ridges," he said with a slight chuckle. "Here's another good one," he said, holding up a large package. He shined his flashlight on the back of the box. "Twelve inches of vibrating pleasure, for the hole that's sick of pegs that are too small. Customer satisfaction guaranteed, or your money back." He let out a whoop and turned to Andy, who's face was a very deep shade of plum. "Think you can take all this, Andy, or is it too much, too soon?"

Andy's lips flapped, unable to make any sound. Nate really had no shame, did he? He just said whatever he wanted, no holds barred. It was amazing to Andy that they made such good friends. Andy was very introverted and intense, a true artist at heart. He really didn't open up to many people, and had a close knit group of old friends rather than a large group of superficial ones. He just preferred hanging out with people who understood him well and whom he could be comfortable with. As low-stress as this environment was, however, it often prevented him from getting one thing he was beginning to need desperately- sex. His realization that he was gay hadn't helped matters, either.

At first he had been terrified of what Nate would say, that they would stop being friends, and then he would really be lonely. He agonized over it for months, until finally Nate had taken him aside and demanded to know what was eating him. He'd broken down and confessed everything, ending up in tears and pleading with Nate not to tell anyone, convinced that this was the end of their friendship. Nate had shocked the hell out of him by comforting him and telling him that they're friendship wasn't going to end just because he liked to fuck guys, and saying that if nothing else he owed Andy for the time Nate had stolen his Nintendo GameCube and for never telling him where it had gone. It was then that Andy knew they would be friends for a very long time.

Eventually, Andy had calmed down enough to tell his other friends about it, and even to talk to Nate about it on a regular basis. Nate was the only one he could ever have asked to come with him tonight.

A loud crash startled him out of his reverie, and his head snapped in its direction.

"Shit," Nate said dramatically, holding his ankle. "These God-damned fake dicks are trying to kill me. Can you just pick one, please? I'll even give you some privacy. I'm gonna go look at the porn."

Andy took one last glance at the pile of dildos that Nate had knocked off the shelf and turned back to his task, chuckling.

He loved Nate to death.

*********************************

Jonathan was sitting at the desk, reading a magazine about skydiving when he heard a loud crash coming from downstairs, followed by a scream and a curse. Clumsy ones, he thought. I hope they're all right. Looking left and right and seeing no immediate threat to the office, he decided to go and see what all the commotion was about. Someone might be hurt down there.

He walked out the door of the office, making sure to lock it before heading down the concrete staircase to the first floor of the complex. Scanning the stores, he saw the light of flashlights of the stock workers moving back and forth in a store called Dirty Pleasures. Maybe tonight won't be so boring after all, he thought, picturing some poor guy trapped under a ladder next to the penis pumps. He laughed to himself, pulling the door open and stepping inside.

He walked in and headed toward the lights in the back of the store, when he caught a glimpse of something that nearly stopped his heart.

Standing in front of a rack of lifelike dildos was a guy in a trench coat and a wide brimmed sun hat, holding a tan colored phallus in his hand, gently stroking the head of it while his other hand massaged the shaft. At by far the most unusual thing he had ever seen, Jonathan stared in amazement as the man ran the dildo across his lips, his tongue even slipping out a little and tracing the head. Jonathan's heartbeat kicked it into high gear and he could feel the familiar tingle in his groin as he reacted to what he was seeing. It really has been too long, he thought as he reached down and adjusted himself.

Just then, another guy came in from another room of the store and spoke to the trench coat. "Dude, you gotta check this out. This is some quality shit, man. Maybe this wasn't such a bad idea."

"Yeah, yeah, Nate. C'mon, I picked one, so I'll just go grab a video and we can get out of here before…" He trailed off, and looked in Jonathan's direction. "Did you hear that?"

"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" trench coat screamed, and accidentally backed into the dildo rack, sending the entire thing crashing to the floor. Both he and Nate fell clumsily to the floor, trying to crawl away from the cop.

"I said freeze!" Jonathan repeated. "Immediately!"

"Fuck you!" Nate shouted. "Help me man!" he said to trench coat, and together they began throwing dildos through the air at Jonathan. Before Jonathan could process what was happening, he was struck in the head by a particularly heavy one, and collapsed to the ground.

******************************

"OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! We killed him! We just killed a cop!" Andy shouted, running round in frenzied circles, still holding the toy he had been examining. "We just killed a cop with dildos! Oh God!"

"We just pelted you with merchandise," Nate said defensively. "Who are you anyway? It's pretty obvious by now that you're not really a cop, or even a security guard, for that matter."

"No, you're right, I'm not," Jonathan said with a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I'm Jonathan, a wannabe security guard from the Greenpeace office upstairs. I'm really just a regular employee, but we've been taking turns dressing up as security to ward off burglars."

"Oh. I'm Nate. Burglars? How much dough could there be at a Greenpeace office?"

"Almost none, but vandals have been coming in at night and stealing the water coolers. We can't afford any more new ones, so here I am."

"Wow dude, that sucks." Nate looked back at Andy, who had been completely silent for the last few minutes. "Are you okay, Carmen? I thought I'd lost you there for a second."

Andy didn't answer. He was too busy staring at guard he had almost killed with sex toys. He had to be, quite literally, the sexiest guy Andy had ever seen. He was about 5'8", and had hair so black it looked blue, cut in one of those "emo" styles with the long bangs on one side. His face somehow seemed radiant to Andy, as though there was backlighting behind it or something. But his eyes were what really made him breathtaking. They were blue, sure, but they were more than just that, they were somehow also white, and yet clear at the same time. Icy, Andy thought dreamily, like the middle of a glacier. He felt like he could fall into those eyes, like they would swallow him up and he could live in them, swimming in their depths for eternity.

Nate snapped his fingers loudly in front of Andy's face.

"Earth to Andy! Hello, are you in there? Can you came out and play right now?"

"Oh!" he exclaimed with a start, knocking his hat off in his crash back to reality. "Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm just a little shocked by all this, that's all. I'm good, now, thanks."

"Okay then. In case you weren't listening, this is Jonathan. He works at Greenpeace upstairs, and he's not really a cop."

Jonathan. How perfect.

"Hi," Andy said shyly, a broad, shit-eating grin breaking out on his face. He actually had to physically restrain himself from giggling and further humiliating himself. He tried to force the grin down to a normal smile.

It didn't work.

"Hi," Jonathan said back, pleasantly surprised by Andy's smile. It was so broad and unapologetic, like a child getting a new puppy. His heart melted a little. Get a grip, he told himself. Then he remembered how he had seen Andy licking the toy and rubbing it over his lips. Now that he had a beautiful face with high cheekbones, yet chubby cheeks, cute, kissable lips and a hundred watt smile to go with it, he was having a hard time keeping his thoughts PG-13.

"Okay," Nate said, breaking the short silence. "Don't mean to interrupt the Kodak moment here and turn up the awkward dial, but you're not gonna tell anyone about this, are you, Jonathan? I don't want my parents to find out that I was caught stealing a dildo from a sex shop by a rent-a-cop at a Greenpeace office. It wouldn't make very pleasant dinner converstaion."

"No worries. I think I'll just keep this between us, especially after the show Andy here put on for me," Jonathan said lasciviously, staring with hooded eyes at Andy's increasingly reddening face. "I'll definitely be keeping my lips sealed tight." Around your cock, he thought.

"Okay…Thanks, I guess," said Nate questioningly, looking back and forth between them. Even he could feel the electricity. He grinned. Andy was finally gonna get some. He'd been trying for years to get him out of his shell, to go out and chase what he wanted. He insisted upon staying around the same group of friends he'd always had, never venturing out to see what the world had to offer. He was a great artist, he really was, but Nate was determined to help his friend out of the closet. Or, more accurately, in Andy's case, a big, person-sized safe inside the aforementioned closet of his secret panic room.

"So, if we're all done here, can we just take our merch and go? It's almost one."

Silence, more staring.

"Yoo-hoo! Okay, Jonathan, here's the deal. I'll give you Andy's number, if you'll let him take the dildo without calling the police. He really needs it, dude. No joke."

"NATE!"

Jonathan laughed out loud. "Don't worry about it, Andy. I think you'll really like it. The 8 series is really good for first timers. That's a good size too. I'm a little bigger, but you'll get used to me eventually." He grinned flirtatiously.

Andy already puce face deepened to near violet. He spluttered, trying to speak. He failed miserably.

Nate sniggered, writing Andy's number down on an x-rated post-it he'd found lying around. "Take him out somewhere nice. He's never been on a date before. If you hit and quit, I'll hunt you down. I'll find you too."

Jonathan laughed again. "You cannot find me," he said in a comic book villain voice. "I am Night Cop, ruler of the midnight hour! I am impossible to locate."

"That's what Carmen SanDiego thought, too."

"Well, I'd better get going. Those water coolers are precious. I'll give you a call, Andy. Your earlier actions your new toy were those of an ameteur, but I was impressed by your enthusiasm. Don't forget to clean up this mess. I don't want to have to answer any questions tomorrow."

Andy nearly lost consciousness.

********************************

Johnathan wiped the sweat from his brow as he walked into the air conditioned classroom. He looked down at his armpits, hoping the sweat damage wasn't too bad. There were pools of wet material that reached nearly to his waist, and the smell wasn't so hot either.

Nice.

He walked toward the front of the room, taking a seat near the right side. He jumped right back up almost as soon as he sat down- the chair seat was about 120 degrees.

Sometimes he really hated the Antelope Valley.

Thank god he was going to be leaving this place in the fall. He was transferring to UC San Diego to study marine biology and hopefully wouldn't see this place again until Christmas.

As thoughts of sandy beaches and blue skies filled his head, his mind couldn't help but wander back to the previous night, and the hottie he'd seen licking the dildo. That image would be with him for a long time. He hadn't slept much the night before, and not just because of the heat. I should call him, Jonathan thought. Now's as good a time as any.

He pulled out his cell phone, and scrolled through his contacts until he found Andy's name. He pressed call. The phone rang a few times, and then someone picked up.

********************************

Andy was going completely insane.

He had needed sex before, but the Dirty Pleasures incident had made it a thousand times worse. His mind was focused on Jonathan constantly-his beautiful eyes, his sexy hair, the fact that he had witnessed Andy playing with the dildo- and Andy just couldn't get it out of his head. After suffering blue balls for nearly four hours, even though he had maturbated twice, he was finally forced to use the dildo. And boy, had he used it.